Lyra had missed Will all through the year, but she was not willing to show it. She talked about it to Pantalaimon, but realized that he grew tired of listening to her ramblings of Will, and besides, she was soon going to Dame Hannah's college.
She still lived in her Staircase Twelve, but it no longer seemed a home, only a temporary place to live. For so long she had traveled from world to world without rest, until it seemed that she belonged nowhere. But Jordan College had seemed to be her home for twelve short years, but it had taken a year for the journey to worlds and to defeat the war, and now, at her fourteenth year of age, the past two weeks after her birthday had seemed so long, such an eternity without Will.
Lyra sat in her windowsill in Staircase Twelve, having nothing to do these days but to just stare and take walks around the whole quad. She did not dare bathe in the river, nor play with the street children. She alone was isolated, ostracized, and there was nothing she could do about it. While other girls and boys of her age were working, they were still careless compared to her. They were ignorant of the other worlds, of the deep complications of the alethiometer.
"Pan," she sighed. "D'you think that there'll be books on how to read the alethiometer? I really want to learn to read it again, I really do."
"I suppose there will be. It will take a lifetime, though. Are you sure you want to learn again?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm sure, Pan, I'm sure of that much, at least. I look at it now, and there's no earthly way to read it! Do you think I could drink some wine and get drunk like I did before? I'd like to do that, seeing as I'm bored all through the day."
"You had better not," he warned. "There's a dinner tonight with Dame Hannah and other important guest, such as the Palmerian professor and the Zoroastrian professor."
"I'm going." She got up and ran down the stairs to the pungent-smelling cellar and took a look at all the wine bottles. The anticipation was pleasant; it differed from the other feelings of randomness. Her spine prickled with excitement as she chose Tokay and broke it off at the neck. There was amber liquid in there, and she sipped at it, careful to not let the wine spill on her dress or let the rough edges of the neck cut her. The flavor was bitter, deeply grand and complicated, just as she had remembered. But she did not get drunk. "Why en't I drunk, Pan? I was drunk before."
"It's probably because you're bigger now, and you can handle more wine," he answered sensibly.
Without speaking, she took another bottle of Tokay and drank it. The flavor in her mouth was not pleasant after the bottle was empty and discarded, but she discovered that she liked the feeling of being wrapped in some sort of cocoon all away from the world. "I'm dizzy, Pan. I'm seeing thrice of everything," she quavered as she tried to get out of the cellar. She took one, two, three cautious steps away and ended up at the stairs. She saw three stairs.
Lyra managed to make it halfway up the stairs before collapsing in dizziness. She closed her eyes for a minute, and then bravely continued her expedition up the stairs.
She got out and sniffed the fresh air. The feeling in her stomach reminded her of nausea; she walked onto the grass and vomited copiously. She came up for air, to realize that she felt better now, and she was not seeing three of everything, but she still had that cocoon-like feeling about her.
Mrs. Lonsdale had happened to see Lyra vomit, and now she waddled over to the spot where Lyra was standing stupidly. "Look at you, child! Are you ill?"
"No," Lyra answered fervently. "No, I'm not ill."
She sniffed Lyra's breath and found that it smelled of stinky alcohol. "You've been drunk, en't you?" she threatened. "Off to your room with ye. You're a naughty one, you are, to be drinkin' spirits of sorts," she said and clouted Lyra on the head. She dragged her up to the room and made her sit down on the bed. "Get dressed. It's nearly five, and the Master'll want you at six-thirty sharp."
Lyra stared at Mrs. Lonsdale for a second, feeling trapped, and then she climbed out the window, stepped onto the gutter, and made her way to the roof. "Try and get me," she taunted, seeing the now-small figure of Mrs. Lonsdale standing there inside her wide window.
"You get back o'er here!" she shouted, waving her meaty arms and tried to climb unsuccessfully.
Lyra stuck her tongue out. She would go in at six instead. There was no harm, was there, in waiting?
She ran over the roof and onto the roof in Yaxley Quad.
A pair of arms grabbed her legs as she went near a window. "Get off, get off!" she shrieked as her head banged on the window-ledge and she was dragged into a high room. She saw the Master glare at her. For an old man, he was surprisingly strong.
"Get back—now," he ordered. His command of authority frightened her, and she scurried out of his room and back into Staircase Twelve.
She was forced to wash her face with a rough scrubbing cloth and made to put on her most hated dress, a light-blue frilly thing with lace that threatened to trip her over every time she walked. Mrs. Lonsdale brushed out Lyra's deep golden snarls in her hair and put it up, unmercifully scraping hairpins onto her scalp. "Now, you don't complain about the pins. How d'you think we put up with it?" she grumbled, pointing to her own chignon. "Now, put your stockings on, the clear white ones—your stockings are gray! Oh, just put them on and your boots as well. The servants blacked it all night for you and you ought to thank Hattie for blacking them, alright."
Lyra was glad to escape from Mrs. Lonsdale's clutches and run all the way to the Dining Room, where she saw the honorable Dame Hannah, some female Scholars, the Palmerian professor, a Skraeling, and what must have been the Zoroastrian professor, because he was somewhat dark-skinned and wore a headdress. The Master was here as well, so she curtsied respectfully. "Good evening, Master."
She took a fancy to the Skraeling and the Zoroastrian professor, because they looked so exotic, while the Palmerian professor looked just like a regular European. "What's the religion of Skraeling, sir?" she asked to the leather-skinned, glossy black-haired person who sat next to her.
"None of your business, young lady," he scolded. Lyra was sorely disappointed. But as she ate her dinner of roasted beef sirloin tip and some kind of bouillabaisse, there came up the subject of Dust and the openings to another world.
"There has been evidence of this matter, Dust, and that it exists. Why, Lord Boreal has disappeared from the face of the earth entirely on his expedition—,"
"Not true, sir," Lyra interrupted. "Lord Boreal was murdered."
"Murdered?" asked the Zoroastrian. "Was he?"
"Yeah. Someone did it to him. I saw it, I did." She could see the shock on everyone's faces and Pantalaimon, on his rare changes, turned into a goldfinch and chirped and twittered with glee.
The Master shot her an evil look that warned her that if she should proceed, something terrible would happen. Then he continued with his conversation as if nothing had happened. "Well, we have got a witness of someone who has seen Dust. It is this girl: Lyra."
Lyra sat up a bit more and said, "We're all Dust. Anything that is conscious matter is Dust, en't it?" she asked, perhaps to Pantalaimon and Will and Serafina Pekkala.
No one said anything more about the matter of Dust, but after the dinner, the Master called her to his study. When she stepped in, he drew a red velvet chair for her to sit down on. It was the simplest in the room. The absolute power the Master had seemed to radiate from his body and somehow work its way into Lyra's head. "Lyra, you are not to say anything about this except to Dame Hannah," he said in his guttural voice. "Before you go tomorrow, however, you said that you wanted to learn every instrument to knowledge."
Lyra nodded, remembering her exact words. "Yeah, I said that. Well, are you going to give it to me or en't you?"
The Master took out a kind of silver thing, very curious; it was a small orb. There was a crack in the middle, and when he opened the crack, something swirled inside there, real and ethereal all at once.
"What is it?"
"I do not know; it is something your father, namely Lord Asriel, gave me many years ago."
"Oh." Whenever the Master gave this type of object, for example the alethiometer, he never knew what it did, or claimed not to know. "Well, thank you, Master." She gave him a gentle hug, for it would be a year before she saw him again.
"So, this is your roommate Cassandra," Dame Hannah introduced. Lyra just looked at the enthusiastic girl who waved and tossed her black hair. She reminded her of Mrs. Coulter, but a kinder and gentler version, if there ever was. "You have an hour to get acquainted, and then we will go to dinner."
Lyra looked around at the place. Outside, it seemed dingy, but it was warm and comforting inside, and everything was white and clean. "This place en't like Jordan, that's for sure," she whispered to Pantalaimon.
Cassandra, once Dame Hannah left, turned into a regular human being. "Lord, we have to act like that when we're meeting new girls. You're Lyra, then, Lyra Belacqua?"
"Lyra Silvertongue." Cassandra's daemon, a sleek gray cat, wound her way around Pantalaimon, an owl. Pantalaimon gave a hoot and hopped away as Cassandra's daemon threatened to trip him over. "My daemon's Pantalaimon."
"Mine's Coppelius," Cassandra giggled. "D'you want to climb up on the roof?"
Lyra was enticed at having another girl share her passion of climbing roofs and she accepted the offer with gladness. Cassandra (or Cassie, as she called her now) showed her the chimney-tops and which places you could sit without sliding down. Then, the dinner-bell rang and they went in regretfully to the Dining-Room.
"It en't so grand as Jordan College," Lyra said, and then she felt her spirits dampen. Oh, how she did miss Jordan! A part of her longed for Jordan, which was her home, her place to live, but she hadn't felt at home there. So where did she belong?
Cassie seemed to sense her sadness so she didn't talk anymore.
In bed that night, while Cassandra was sleeping in her own four-poster bed, Lyra looked at the bed-hangings and the wood and the scenery. It was so different from her Staircase Twelve.
"Pan, I miss Jordan. I've never done so before. It en't right. I ought to be happy here, but I en't," she said in above a whisper. Something seemed to hurt inside her and she broke into a fit of passionate sobbing, of longing for Mrs. Lonsdale, the servants, Master, the Steward, the Scholars, everyone that had treated her like family. She surprised herself but didn't make any attempts to stop crying.
She mostly closed her eyes and wept under the covers, and when she poked her head out and wiped her eyes a bit, she saw that there was the faint grayish-blue light that promised dawn. A look at the different scenery made her eyes overflow again for a little while; it was like a night-ghast that she'd had when she was five, only to find out that it was true.
She looked at Pan and found that he had fallen asleep. She looked up at the bed-hangings and thought, "I suppose I ought to sleep."
She closed her eyes and drifted off.
The next day, she found that she had alethiometer lessons with Dame Hannah herself, instead of the other regular teachers.
She stepped into the room and saw the elderly, kind lady. "Dame Hannah, I'm here for alethiometer lessons."
Dame Hannah seemed to sense her hidden sadness and drew her to a chair. Lyra took out the alethiometer and stared at the clicks of the knobs and the senseless way the bigger, heavier arrow swung its way around the whole of thirty-six symbols, stopping sometimes at a symbol and not at another. "Dame Hannah, can you give me the book?" she asked. A thick, heavy, red-leather-bound book, dusty with age, was put carefully aside the alethiometer. She flipped open the book, traced her right index finger down the endless table of contents, and found Symbols and Meanings. She flipped it to page 1590.
"The meanings in the alethiometer are endless, but with comprehension, it can be used to ask many questions, pointing at the right symbols. The word alethiometer is derived from Greek word aletheias, which means truth. Therefore, the purpose of the alethiometer is to tell the truth, no matter what.
"This object is dangerous, for it can tell everything about the world, and many governments do not want the people to know the truth of nature.
"The thirty-six symbols have different meanings.
"The baby can represent innocence, child, play, new, ignorance, youth; many are known by understanding how the alethiometer works."
This was but a small section of the chapter Symbols and Meanings, but they seemed useless, because she'd read it before and she'd previously known the meanings when she was twelve.
Lyra slammed the book shut, a wall of rage building up in her mind. "I've learned to understand the alethiometer, so why can't I read it?" she screamed. "En't I learned enough about the world? En't I learned enough things to read it?" She kicked over her chair and ran out of the room and down the staircase. The halls were not deserted, unfortunately; it was passing time for classes. Lyra shot like a bullet through the massive bulk of students and tried to get up to the roof, but found she couldn't.
Cassandra followed Lyra, and she led Lyra up to the roof, and then left herself.
Lyra screamed in frustration. "Oh, that book is useless! We can't ever learn to read it. It's gone, forever, and only the angels know what to do with it! Serafina, it would be a good time for you to come right now," she growled to the soot-clogged sky. The sky wasn't even visible for her to scream at…
She kicked at a metal pipe hard, only to find that the consequence was more rage and a sore foot. "Pan, nothing's like Jordan here! Everything's different and so un-homelike! Even the Costa's boats and the journey to the Arctic were more homelike than here. Mrs. Coulter's—my mother's—home isn't a welcome place, no matter what the Master says!" She stomped her foot and growled again.
Pan turned into an ermine, snow-white and soft. He crept around Lyra's neck and nudged his face on Lyra's cheek tenderly. "I know you miss Jordan, but it'll be better here," he said quietly.
"Well, it en't," she replied vehemently. "This en't my family here. I had no family, did I, Pan?"
"I'm your family," he offered.
"I know. You're a daemon, so that makes sense. But Ma Costa en't my mother, and Lord John Faa and Farder Coram en't my fathers. And Will…"
"For God's sake, stop talking about Will, might you?"
Lyra took out the alethiometer and stared at it until her eyes saw symbols when she closed them. It did not help, but, as she vaguely remembered, looking at the alethiometer gave her a sense of calmness and wholeness. "Oh, I feel much better looking at it," she whispered so that Pantalaimon could not hear her.
Someone was on the roof; Lyra looked at the direction of the sound, startled, but found that it was only Cassandra. "Is Dame Hannah mad at me? I am, but she en't, is she?" she asked anxiously, biting her lower lip afterward.
"No, she en't mad at you, but she says that you might want to take it easy here. What happened, anyway?" she asked curiously. Here was a new pupil, one heard all around the world, from Brytain to Norroway to High Brazil to America. "I've heard that you seen Dust or Rusakov particles, whatever they are."
"Can I just go to bed? I en't feel like talking to anyone but you now."
"Sure. Dame Hannah's nice, but she gets fair moithered when a pupil disobeys." Lyra's face contorted into an expression of worry, so she hurried on: "She en't too mad; she knows that what you're relearning—the aleth—alethio—whatever it is—is hard and it'll take a lifetime."
"It's the alethiometer."
"Might I see it?"
Lyra took a deep sigh and pulled the alethiometer out of her black velvet bag. "I forgot how to read it. I used to be able, but I can't now. It en't fair."
Cassie took the alethiometer in her hands gingerly, and even so, she only let her gaze wander over it for a minute, as if she were afraid that looking too long would result in her eyes going blind, like the basilisk. "It's made of pure gold, that is," she said, and gave it back to her outstretched hands.
She stowed it away in the black velvet and had Cassandra guide her to their room.
Their room. Lyra no longer had a private room. Everything done would be known by her mate, her perhaps future friend, and the knowledge was not welcome. Nothing could be done alone, not even talking to Pantalaimon. "I hate this place," she said to Pan passionately and hit the iron bed-frame hard. It was very true; she hated this place with vehement, and she wanted to be back where she belonged, or at least where everyone was somewhat familiar.
She felt a bulge in her skirt pocket and pulled out the strange silver orb. It seemed to emanate a sense of danger and excitement, and, very possibly, death itself.
Things swirled inside it, but one thing caught her eye. Will was there.
Lyra caught her breath at the longed-for and familiar sight of the handsome, dark-haired boy. "Will, you able to hear me?" she asked, but no reaction came, just as she'd inwardly expected but outwardly hoped that he'd be able to hear her. "Oh, that was useless! Of course Will en't going to come; he's in another world and we can't meet until Midsummer's Day!" She ground her teeth to stop crying: she was not a girl who cried often, only when she was in distress. The need to cry passed away quickly, as usual, so she relaxed her jaws.
She stared at the orb. There came images of Mary Malone, angels, the highest angel of order called God, the Magisterium, Will's knife, and something black spreading. When it had all ended and everything was just majestic swirling mist inside, she put it back into her bag and lay down on her unmade bed, with Pantalaimon always by her side. "What d'you think this all means? The Master never gave us any instructions—not even how to work it."
Pan changed from his ermine shape into a moth and settled on the bridge of Lyra's nose to make her cross-eyed. "Perhaps you need to work it out for yourself," he suggested in his tiny squeaky moth voice.
Lyra changed the subject altogether, feeling too stressed about these events. "I en't going to take alethiometer lessons again if it means I'm studying out of a stupid book," she said angrily and punched the iron bed-frame with her right hand again. "That book's useless." She pursed her lips and refused to go on.
Pantalaimon gave a tiny moth sigh and turned into a leopard, a small snow leopard. "You have got a conscience, haven't you? Perhaps you had better apologize to Dame Hannah."
"I en't going to!" she cried out and wanted to slap Pan, but something stayed her hand and instead she kept it where it was, gripping one of the iron bed-frame bar. "I don't mean to and I en't going to!" She wanted to say that she was mad clear through but decided that it wouldn't be good.
During dinner, she was thoroughly depressed about the subject, and when she went to bed, she glared at Cassandra with cruel blue eyes. But at night, she woke up three times, and on the first two, she found the same rage boiling inside her heart but on the third, the rage in her young breast had subsided and cooled to an emotion similar to pity, but not quite.
There was still the residue of rage in her heart that made her cold and unfeeling when Cassandra answered a question on experimental theology wrong, which was of elementary particles. She did not help her either, when she needed someone to turn the jump-rope, but just sat down on a bench in the garden near the playing area. Lyra knew that Cassandra was not bright but still refused to help.
Alethiometer lessons came, of course, but instead, Lyra ran to the roof again and found that serene peace and tranquility by looking up at the now-visible sky.
The sky was no longer soot-clogged but now nearly as clear as Jordan College air, but to be sure, this was not the countryside, unlike Jordan. Just being able to see the sky cleared her mind as she sat down cross-legged like a Turk and hugged Pantalaimon.